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Comment by matsemann | Hacker News Reader

Worth noting: Ocado is fighting a legal battle against AutoStore over this technology: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-06-17/ocado-los...

The warehouse system in the video is basically a copy of AutoStore.

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> AutoStore says its first supplied technology to Ocado as early as 2012 and this is the foundation on which the Ocado Smart Platform was built. The company has claimed several patent infringements relating to the design and lifting mechanism of Ocado’s robots.

If true, yikes, but at the same time I have doubts if some aspects of the technology are even patentable (or at least make the claims too narrow to the point that patent-free variations allow workarounds and make the patents useless).

Given that Autostore's patent on the idea is from 1997 [1] and has expired, it's difficult to see how they could have another, non-expired patent on the same thing.

[1] https://patents.google.com/patent/DE69818303T2/en

According to this[1], they list the below 5 patents which are still active until 2033

AutoStore alleges Ocado is infringing on the following five patents: 10,093,525[2], 10,294,025[3], 10,474,140[4], 10,494,239[5], and 10,696,478[6].

[1] https://www.therobotreport.com/autostore-sues-ocado-over-as-...

[2] https://patents.google.com/patent/US10093525

[3] https://patents.google.com/patent/US10294025

[4] https://patents.google.com/patent/US10474140

[5] https://patents.google.com/patent/US10494239

[6] https://patents.google.com/patent/US10696478

Unless its a copy of the technology, is it protected ip? Its an idea (use tracked robots on top of product bins) and there's some issue about patenting ideas vs technology.

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